Fourth illustration for Dickens's Barnaby Rudge
in the single volume Barnaby Rudge and Hard Times in the Ticknor & Fields (Boston, 1867)
Diamond Edition.

In this fourth full-page character study for the first
novel in the compact American publication, a rain-soaked ruffian, a criminal
presumed dead but who haunts the living, prowls the seedier environs of
London by night. By nature what we would call a "loner," Barnaby's father
leads a clandestine existence, and is affiliated or allied with nobody else.
[Commentary continues below.]

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Having disappeared from the vicinity of the Maypole and the
Warren the day after the murder of Reuben Haredale years before, Old Rudge
has led a furtive, underworld existence in the meaner streets of the
metropolis,
occasionally dropping by his wife's shop to extort food and coins from her. In
this night scene reminiscent of Phiz's dark plates for Bleak
House (1852-53) Eytinge communicates his subject's shiftless,
outlaw lifestyle:

Among all the dangerous characters who, in such a state of
society, prowled and skulked in the metropolis at night, there was one man
from whom many as uncouth and fierce as he, shrunk with an
involuntary dread. Who he was, or whence he came, was a question
often asked, but which none could answer. His name was unknown, he
had never been seen until within about eight days or thereabouts,
and was equally a stranger to the old ruffians, upon whose haunts
he ventured fearlessly, as to the young. He could be no spy, for
he never removed his slouched hat to look about him, entered into
conversation with no man, heeded nothing that passed, listened to
no discourse, regarded nobody that came or went. But so surely as
the dead of night set in, so surely this man was in the midst of
the loose concourse in the night-cellar where outcasts of every
grade resorted; and there he sat till morning.

He was not only a spectre at their licentious feasts; a something
in the midst of their revelry and riot that chilled and haunted
them; but out of doors he was the same. Directly it was dark, he
was abroad — never in company with any one, but always alone; never
lingering or loitering, but always walking swiftly; and looking (so
they said who had seen him) over his shoulder from time to time,
and as he did so quickening his pace. In the fields, the lanes,
the roads, in all quarters of the town — east, west, north, and
south — that man was seen gliding on like a shadow. He was always
hurrying away. Those who encountered him, saw him steal past,
caught sight of the backward glance, and so lost him in the
darkness.

This constant restlessness, and flitting to and fro, gave rise to
strange stories. He was seen in such distant and remote places, at
times so nearly tallying with each other, that some doubted whether
there were not two of them, or more — some, whether he had not
unearthly means of travelling from spot to spot. The footpad
hiding in a ditch had marked him passing like a ghost along its
brink; the vagrant had met him on the dark high-road; the beggar
had seen him pause upon the bridge to look down at the water, and
then sweep on again; they who dealt in bodies with the surgeons
could swear he slept in churchyards, and that they had beheld him
glide away among the tombs on their approach. And as they told
these stories to each other, one who had looked about him would
pull his neighbour by the sleeve, and there he would be among them.
[Ch. 16, p. 82-83]

In Eytinge's illustration, dimly perceived in the background, weeds
such as those that grow on the banks of the Thames frame the striding
figure, his determination suggested by his clenched
hands and singular gaze riveting the viewer. Eytinge has depicted him
in period costume, notably in topboots. The fragmentary scarf blows in
the wind, suggesting the speed with which the fugitive moves. Eventually,
Geoffrey Haredale (the murdered man's brother) apprehends Old Barnaby
Rudge, formerly steward to the Haredales, for Reuben's murder,
and the ruffian is imprisoned at Newgate and hanged.